YHWH (Exodus 3) 5- God Is Omni-Benevolent

One more time, let's put our hands together and celebrate the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody.

I see that we didn't have to have a dock set up so that you could pull your boat to church today.

We all made it.

Before you have a seat, I want you to high-five two people and say it's good to see you today.

It is good to see you today.

It's always better to see you than to not see you.

Praise the Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

It is good to be in the house of the Lord today.

Can we put our hands together and celebrate our band who are such an amazing job leading us in worship?

We're so thankful that one of the things I love about RLC is that our hope for you during our time of worship is it's not intended to be a concert.

It's a time for us to sing to the Lord together.

And one of my favorite things is that when we sing songs like gratitude and the whole congregation just sings together, we are all leading one another in worship.

And I just want to say thank you so much for doing that.

If you have your Bibles, would open up with me to the next part of our series entitled Yahweh, spelled Y-H-W-H.

That's what it spells, I promise.

Yahweh.

And if you are a first-time guest, welcome.

It is good to see you.

Uh inside your worship guide is a connect card.

We'd love for you to fill that out and you can drop it off at the Welcome Center.

We have a free gift for you.

And we also want to give you a Bible so that next week, when you are with us, you can turn in your Bibles to Exodus 3 and Lamentations chapter 3.

Lamentations 3 · chapter mention

Going to give you a minute to find Lamentations chapter 3 because it's in the middle, is where it is.

Lamentations 3 · chapter mention

It's around in the middle.

But we are going to talk about another one of the attributes of God.

One of the things we've been doing in this series is saying, for many of us, we have this idea of who God is, but time and trouble and difficulties, you know, they they come and they make things bigger in our life.

And without making God any smaller, our troubles get bigger.

And before we know it, depending on the circumstance, our troubles may seem bigger than God.

And so what we want to do is just put him back in his rightful place as just absolutely awesome.

And I've been telling you different stories of what my hope is for the series of just moments when we are just amazed at the glory of God.

And I've been telling you some different ones.

And I got another one for you that happened to me one time that is kind of my hope for us.

And that is this.

A few years ago, my family, after our Christmas Eve Eve service, we wanted to go to a cabin for Christmas.

Just to kind of get away from everything, kind of just be uh alone as a family.

But of course, right before we left to go to this cabin, I came down with the flu.

This is not that far off from exactly the way I looked.

Okay.

It was it was horrible.

I, matter of fact, our family calls it the flu cabin because dad had the flu, and I was trying my best not to make everybody else unhappy.

But you know how it is.

And one of those days, you know, my family wanted to go and watch a movie.

And I said, You go ahead, because I got the flu, right?

I was so just not happy with the world.

And so thankfully they left me alone and they went to go watch this movie.

And I'm I'm there and I'm just miserable, and I get in the bed and I am just about asleep.

And all of a sudden, I hear the loudest noise I thought I'd ever heard in my life.

They they were yelling and screaming, and I thought, oh no.

But when they came down, they were not unhappy.

They were excited.

My family would not stand for a picture, and so this is the best I got, okay?

That's roughly what they look like.

They were so excited.

They said, Dad, we have just watched the most amazing, the most stupendous, the most excellent, the most movie movie of all movies.

It's awesome.

You've got to come see this movie.

To which I said, No, I am not interested in seeing your most movie of all movies.

I'm sick.

I have the flu.

And they were like, no.

I mean, they it was almost as if they were getting a cut of the proceeds.

You know what I'm saying?

They so badly wanted me to go see this movie.

And it wasn't that, they were just satisfied customers.

They couldn't wait.

And so they drug me to the movie.

And I'm there and I feel terrible.

And they're so excited.

Like literally the next day, they went and watched it again.

All right.

And so I am there for the second viewing for them, the first viewing for me.

And I'm like, okay, let's do this.

And honestly, my expectations were pretty high because they were so excited.

But as the movie went on, I was like, okay, it's pretty good.

And then as the movie kept going, I was like, okay, it's really good.

And then there was a moment in the movie when I was like, okay, this is awesome.

Okay.

And it got really dusty in the room after a little while.

I didn't cry, but my eyes got to burning a lot because it was such an amazing moment.

And so I just thought it was absolutely awesome.

And so I became an absolute believer.

And honestly, it was amazing where I was like, that's awesome.

And that is the idea that I want for all of us in this series.

As I've been telling you, we are passing out invisible coupons.

That awesome, that's awesome coupons.

Because my hope throughout this series is that at some point throughout this series, you're going to learn something about God that you didn't know or you're being reminded about.

And all you're going to be able to do is go, yeah, that's awesome.

And so if you find that moment, I want you to tell the rest of us and just say, that's awesome.

As a matter of fact, when I count to three, I want you to practice.

One, two, three.

That's awesome.

Isn't he though?

Isn't he though?

Absolutely.

And then we'll give you another coupon so you can keep on going because the Lord is awesome.

When is the last time that thinking about God took your breath away?

When is the last time thinking about his greatness and who he is just absolutely blew your mind and you didn't have words for it other than just to say, that's awesome?

I think that's what we need because as we've been saying, I think the two most important truths we believe are what we believe about God and what we believe he says about us.

And so the problem is that when we don't know what we believe about God, when we don't see him clearly and difficulties come, we end up feeling uncertain, afraid, stressed, angry, worried, agitated.

And I think that there's many reasons for it, but for one reason is because we don't see God clearly.

Because as our troubles have gotten bigger, our view of God has not gotten bigger.

And now we're not so sure who is bigger God or our troubles.

And so our point of this series is to remind you that God is so much bigger than we can imagine.

Because when we start to have a clear view of God, the Bible says that the byproduct of that relationship is that God brings love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And I don't know about you, I think you're doing just fine.

But your neighbor really needs some of this stuff.

And so look at them and say, I hope you're taking notes.

You didn't tell them.

Okay, I get it.

Look at somebody else.

Look at somebody that you've been trying to avoid and tell them you really need to pay attention to this.

Go ahead and tell them.

Yeah.

Because you're mean.

Tell them that.

I mean, no, don't do that.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

But they they absolutely need this because here's the big idea.

And that is that the more we see God clearly, the more we can see everything else.

When we get a clear image of God, it helps us to see everything downstream from there.

And so this series is a reminder of who God is so that we can see everything else the way that we're supposed to see it.

And so what we're doing is we're using this moment when God reintroduced himself to the people of Israel as that jumping off point so we can reintroduce ourselves to God.

Because what we've been talking about is between Genesis and Exodus, about 400 years had passed.

And the nation of Israel went from just visiting the nation of Egypt to where now they are slaves of Egypt.

And Egypt was a polytheistic culture, which means they believed in many different gods who did many different things.

And it's possible that over time the view of God from the Israelites got to where he became just among all the other gods.

And so now it's time for God to deliver the nation of Israel.

And so he's reintroducing himself to the people to remind them of who he is.

And he does it through a guy named Moses.

And he does, he reveals himself to Moses in such an interesting way.

The Bible says that he actually had a bush that caught on fire, yet it didn't burn down.

And so Moses was like, I've got to go see this.

This is really crazy.

And it was to get Moses' attention.

And when it did, the Bible said that when the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, here I am, which is all you can say when a bush is talking to you, right?

Here I am, Moses replied.

Don't come any closer, the Lord warned.

Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.

I am the God of your father.

In other words, of the nation of Israel where you come from, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And then he said, It is time for me to deliver my people.

And I want you to be my mouthpiece.

I want you to go tell them that I am on my way and I'm going to set them free.

But Moses, because he's also grown up in that area, he is saying, Well, if I go to the people of Israel, they will ask me, Well, what is his name?

What should I tell them?

Because what he's doing is he's saying, Okay, we got all these different gods, and now we have the God of Israel.

Okay, which one should I say is is coming to save them?

And God is saying, No, I'm not right here.

I'm up here.

I'm so much bigger.

He replied and he said, I am who I am.

Say to this people of Israel, I am, has sent me to you.

Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, has sent me to you.

This is my eternal name to remember for all generations.

Oh, and by the way, let them know I have seen them.

I have seen how the Egyptians are treating you.

So, in other words, he's saying, The reason why you can't see me is because you're looking right here among everything else.

I'm not right here among the other so-called gods.

I am the one true God.

You got to look up, you got to get a bigger idea of who I am.

Then you can finally see me.

That's what the word I am actually means.

It's it's you'd he vav he, y-h-w-h, and it is an action verb.

And it actually means eternally present, unique, the sustainer of all things.

So he's saying, I am not one of these so-called gods, I am the one true and living God.

Everything you see that was made and everything that was created was through me and by me and for me.

I am so much bigger than you can imagine.

And the name Yahweh was so sacred among God's people that they didn't even use it.

They were they were afraid of dishonoring his name.

It was because they loved his name so much that they would say, Adonai, which means God, or Hashem or Harishim, which means the name, because they so honored who God is.

And as God continued to move, we get the story of Israel as they were delivered from Egypt.

They were fed for 40 years.

He continued to show that he was so much bigger than they can imagine.

And that's what this series is all about is to show that God is so much bigger than we can imagine.

And so we've been talking about all these different attributes of God.

And I've got a new one for you today.

I'm gonna give you a minute to write this one down, and that is God is holy, powerful, present, in control, and the word is omnibenevolent.

Praise the Lord.

Extra credit if you can write Mr.

Sunglass's face over there right beside it.

I'm gonna give you a minute because that might be the only time in your life you ever need to write down that word.

So there it is, all right.

So what we said is that God is holy, which means he is different in his sacred standby himselfness.

He's just different.

And he is powerful, he's omnipotent.

There's no one that has more power than God.

He is present, which means there's nowhere that you can go that God is not there.

He is in control, he is sovereign over all things, and he is omni-benevolent in all things.

And so there's a lot of different ways to kind of qualify this.

But the most straightforward, most simple way to do it is this omnibenevolent simply means God is good all the time.

And don't you just feel the itch to say and all the time, God is good, just feel the itch to say.

Let's just go ahead and do it.

God is good and all the time, we're gonna do that about a thousand times in this message.

So just go ahead and get ready for it because it's a good way to remember that God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good, including that other time.

All the time, God is good.

And by the way, here is a disclaimer, and that is this that I know that this is one of those that can then nuance into a thousand different other conversations.

That since God is good, what about this, that, and the other?

And so, what this is an opportunity to tell you that we have our annual RLC conference coming up in about a month.

Can we say amen for that?

It is a wonderful time we get together on a Saturday, and it's a discipleship conference, and there's gonna be so many great things.

You can stop by the Welcome Center today to get signed up for it.

But because this is such a nuanced conversation, I'm gonna do a session called The Problem of Evil.

And it is since God is good, let's talk about the bad days.

Let's talk about how to find God's goodness in the worst days of our life.

I think that would be absolutely important for us to talk about.

So we're gonna talk about the outflow of it, but first today I want to celebrate with the fact that he is good, that God is good all the time and all the time.

Just, I mean, you got to pay attention because I'm gonna say it so many times.

I'm gonna give you, I was looking through the Bible to see how many different places could we find different expressions of God's goodness, and we don't have that kind of time today because it's all over the place.

So I'm gonna give you three different places where we see God's goodness.

Here's the first one, and that is an expression of God's goodness is found in creation.

That the Bible says it's in creation.

Genesis 1.1 said, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And then he went about creating all these other things and all this other stuff.

And then on day six, God did something absolutely mysterious, and that is he looked around at everything he had made, Genesis 131, and he saw that it wasn't just good, but it was very good.

The reason why that's mysterious is he'd already created cats.

And so I don't know what was going on.

I've looked for different Hebrew translations, I'm looking for it to say good other than cats.

It doesn't say that, so praise the Lord, anyhow.

All right, but any anything in his creation, he looked at it and he said, That's good.

That's beautiful, that's wonderful.

And so one of the ways that we can see God's goodness is anytime you see beauty in creation, it's a reminder of God's goodness.

Because God didn't have to do it that way.

He could have just created some blank, colorless plane of existence, put us on there as stick figures, and we just kind of wandered around.

But instead, every time we see beauty in creation, we're reminded of his goodness.

Every time we see beauty in creation, we see another masterpiece that God had made.

Every time we see out in the stars, the Bible says that the stars are all numbered by him.

He knows each one of them by name.

We see stars, he sees Ralph and Fred and George and Susie and all of those.

He knows all their names.

Every time we see a sunrise or a sunset, we see the beauty of it and we realize that he is good.

Every time we see beauty in creation, we know that God is every time we see something beautiful in creation, we know that God is good.

What can I say?

Okay, yes.

Every time we see beauty in creation, we know that God is good.

Every time you see my wife, okay, key anyway, moving on.

Another one is his patience.

We see an expression of God's goodness in his patience.

The Bible says the Lord is not being slow about his promise as some people think.

No, he's being patient.

For whose sake?

Mine and yours.

He does not want anyone to be destroyed.

You want to see God's goodness?

Every time you see the beauty of creation, you see his goodness at work.

Every time you see his patience, you see his beauty.

Do you want to know what his patience looks like?

If you want to see the extent of God's patience, look at your neighbor.

Look at them right now.

If you only knew how silly they were, if you only knew how stubborn they were, if you only knew how many times God was like, stop it.

But yet he still loves you.

He still likes you.

Can I tell you, God has used all his patience on me.

I hope he's got enough left for you.

But God does, he has infinite impatience.

You want to see God's goodness?

Look around you, look in the mirror, and you can see God's goodness.

So God's shows his goodness in creation, in his patience, and then here's one more in the cross.

The Bible says in Romans 5:8, God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

Romans 5:8

You know what's amazing about that is God didn't have to do that, but he did.

He didn't have to do it, but he did.

He took on my cross and he took on your cross and he did it because he loves us.

And here's the amazing thing is the the reality is the greatest act of God's goodness is when he gave his life for us, and it wasn't us on our best day, he gave his life for us on our worst day.

Like, think about that.

Think about the very best day of your life when you were the most awesome, like today.

Okay, that day he gave his life for you.

But then think about that other day that you try to forget.

Here's one that'll hurt your feelings.

How about this one?

Every time you've sinned, God was there.

That's so horrible.

But on that day, he's like, I still want them.

I'll still die for them.

That's awesome, amen.

Absolutely it is.

He says, I'll take them.

And so here's the response.

Our only response is because God is good, we can trust his character when we don't understand anything else.

Our response when we look at creation and we realize he didn't have to do it, but thank goodness he did.

When we look at his patience, he didn't have to, but he did.

And then when we look at the cross, he stepped off of his throne, born into our world, carried our sin on the cross, rose again, and he still likes us.

Our only response is that we can trust who he is, his character, when we don't understand anything else.

So it's not if God is good, why did this happen?

It's since God is good.

I will trust that he knows what he's doing.

And so here's the question of the day: how can God's goodness bring hope when we face pain, grief, and confusion?

I know that there are some Christians who say that once you become a Christian, you don't experience pain, grief, and confusion.

That once you're a Christian, you only have good days.

Well, you go ahead and enjoy those good days.

I live in the real world, okay?

Sometimes it feels like ever since I got saved, I have more pain, grief, and confusion.

Because now I'm in a spiritual war against the devil who doesn't want us to live victoriously.

And so, how can we get hope from God's goodness?

Because we live in a real world.

And to me, one of the best examples in the Bible of how we can find hope in God's goodness when we don't understand anything else is in the story of Jeremiah.

I know we talked about him a few weeks ago, but Jeremiah wrote a book called The Book of Lamentations.

And it was actually five songs, five funeral songs.

They're called dirges, five funeral songs that he wrote over the city of Jerusalem.

Because what had happened was all of Jeremiah's life, he had prophesied to the people of Israel.

And he said, People of Israel, if we don't turn around from our sin, if we don't turn toward God, then he's not going to protect us when these enemy armies come in.

He's going to let them overthrow us.

We've got to turn around, we've got to turn around.

And their answer kept being, no, we don't want to.

God will do it anyway.

We don't want to.

We're going to serve all of our other gods.

And he kept saying, that's not how this works.

And then finally, the Babylonians came and it was a disaster.

They they broke down the walls, they slaughtered so many people.

Those they didn't slaughter, most of them they took into captivity all over the known world for exile for over 70 years.

And Jeremiah was left, and as smoke is coming from the ruined city, he's sitting there in his misery, and he is writing about the devastation of what has happened.

The devastation of what's happened.

And for the first two and a half chapters, he's just singing the blues.

The first two and a half chapters are the blues.

B.B.

King could have sang them.

I mean, they are absolutely so sad.

And they were also written in an acrostic.

So, like the Hebrew language has letters, just like in English.

And so you have A, B, C all the way through.

And each one of the letters would be a stanza for the song, talking about how bad everything was.

But about halfway through, he shifts the entire conversation.

And it's the first time he actually starts talking to God.

And what happens is we see how in one one letter called Zine, he talks about his pain.

The second one, chet, by the way, he talks about God's hope.

And then in tet he says, What do we do?

And it was him processing that since God is good, this is how I'm going to process when I don't understand everything else.

He said it like this He said, Peace has been stripped away, and I have forgotten what prosperity is.

I cry out, my splendor is gone.

Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost.

The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.

I will never forget this awful time as I griever over my loss.

Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this.

The faithful love of the Lord never ends.

His mercies never cease.

Great is his faithfulness.

His mercies begin afresh every morning.

And so I say to myself, The Lord is my inheritance.

Therefore, I will hope in him.

The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.

So it is good to wait patiently.

Or wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.

He's not sitting in a coffee shop somewhere.

He's not sitting here with us.

He is sitting among the ruins of the city of God.

And he says, okay, I trust God's character, even when I can't trust anything else around me.

Therefore, I'm going to give it over to him and see what God will do.

And he discovers that God is good all the time.

And so we're going to try that again.

And we're going to look at what he does to process his pain, give it to God, and then take a next step.

So I'm going to say it, then you say with me, God is good and all the time.

One more time, God is good and all the time.

Let me tell you how God is good.

God is good, number one, because his goodness reminds us that he is strong.

His goodness is strong.

It is stronger than anything that we face.

He is stronger than anything that we go through.

He is so strong that he can take our worst days and he can celebrate in our best days.

Look at what Jeremiah did is he'd been talking for two and a half chapters about how bad everything was.

And then he finally turns to the Lord.

This is one of the first times he actually says the Lord's name.

He says, Peace has been stripped away.

My splendor is gone.

Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost.

The thought of my suffering is bitter beyond words.

I will never forget this awful time as I grieve over my loss.

He doesn't take his pain and run away from God.

He takes his pain and he runs toward God because he trusts that God is good.

Therefore, he is strong enough for every one of his wounds.

There are three things that he does he, first of all, he realizes God is strong enough to handle disappointment.

I love the verse when it says, Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost.

That's so honest.

I love that so much.

That he gives us permission to say, God, I really thought you would do this.

I really knew you could do this, but you did something different.

And God's not offended.

God doesn't say, How dareth thou, Jeremiah?

That's the King James version, all right?

The definition around my house is how could you?

He doesn't do that.

Instead, he's like, Come on, what else?

What else?

Disappointment.

Here's another one that is, he's able to handle when we hate the season that we're in.

I love how he says, though the thought of my suffering is bitter beyond words.

I will never forget this awful time.

Anybody ever had a job that that was your life verse on Monday mornings?

Think about that right there.

The thought of my suffering is bitter beyond words.

I will never forget this awful time.

I've been at work for an hour and it feels like three days, right?

That you ever been there before?

Here's the thing God is not mad at you if you just don't enjoy the season that you're in.

If you ever, other words, have you ever had a newborn?

Okay, that's just me.

That's just me.

Okay, yeah.

It's okay if that's not your favorite season.

Like you love them.

Like my my thing was is I felt so not prepared for the task.

When we had brought home our first baby, I was so thankful and I was so happy.

And then I realized we got to keep this thing alive.

And the hospital won't take them back, and so we can see them on the weekends.

And I was like, this is not my favorite season because I don't know what I'm doing.

But the reality is, God is big enough.

He's big enough to handle our disappointments, he is big enough to for seasons that we hate, and he's big enough to handle our grief.

I love how it says, I'll never forget this awful time.

As I grieve over my loss, God's not ashamed of your tears, but he's good and he walks with us in them.

He said the Bible says that in Isaiah 53, he has carried our sorrows.

It says, you can cast all your cares on him because he cares for you.

And the thing is, is that grief is so peculiar because it moves in seasons and cycles and it moves in waves.

And here's the thing: God is not ashamed of any one of those waves.

But rather, he steps in in our darkest moments.

The good news is that our God is not flaky, petty, or passive aggressive.

He doesn't abandon us when we struggle.

But rather, it's when we struggle that he goes even further into all of our needs.

God is good all the time, including we're having a bad day.

I love how the Apostle Paul helps us to understand that we can trust God in his yeses and in the no's.

There's this time in Paul's life where the Bible said that he had a thorn in the flesh, and we don't know what it was.

We've got a lot of ideas, but we're not sure exactly what it was.

It's just that it was bad and Paul didn't want it in his life.

It was it was causing him suffering.

And the Bible says that three different times Paul prayed and asked God to take it away.

But after the third time that he would pray, literally every time he would pray, the Bible says each time God said, My grace is all you need.

My power works best in weakness.

And Paul, because he knew that God was good, instead of saying, Why, God, he's like, Okay, God, therefore I am now glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.

If you don't know the character of God, then you wonder why, God.

But when we see him clearly, because we see the beauty of creation, we see the beauty in his patience with us, and we see the beauty of the cross, then we realize that if God doesn't take it from us, then he will be with us through it.

And so the reality is God is good all the time.

God does not leave when the road gets hard to travel.

And we can trust that if God asks us to go through it, he's gonna step with us every step of the way because he is good.

How can we find hope when we go through all manner of difficulty because of God's goodness?

It's because we realize that he is strong enough to carry every one of our weaknesses, every one of our difficulties.

And he never asks us to go through a single moment alone.

And when we don't understand anything else that he's doing, we can trust his character and go, if Jesus would die for me, if Jesus would be this patient with me, if I can see his beauty in creation, then I choose to trust everything else.

Amen.

And God is good and all the time.

By the time we're done, I'm gonna need you to say it a little bit more excited than that, okay?

But that's good enough so far.

God is strong enough.

Here's a second one, and that is his goodness dares us to hope.

His goodness doesn't just stand with us in our difficulty, but he actually wants to heal us of our inability to move.

Because sometimes we can get so sad and so just in a difficult place, and we get so overwhelmed that we become paralyzed by that overwhelm.

But what he wants to do is he wants to dare us to move forward again, dare us to live again, dare us to dream again.

He says it like this He says, Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this, that the faithful love of the Lord never ends, his mercies never cease.

Great is his faithfulness, his mercies begin afresh each morning.

You know what I love about this?

Is Jeremiah, he's writing a funeral song.

He's writing a song about devastation.

There's there's possibly smoke still coming from the city.

He's he sees his friends are not there anymore.

They've been taken off into exile.

This is a really bad day.

And he's sitting there and he's writing and he's going, God, I miss so and so.

And God, I hate when they tore that building down, and God, I hate all of this.

And he says, But you know what?

I still trust you.

I still dare to hope again when I remember you.

His his joy wasn't coming from the devastation, his joy was coming when he was focusing on the Lord, when he was focusing on his goodness.

And he said, When I remember the goodness of God, it gives me the ability to start to live again.

And he said that there were three things.

He said, I remember his faithful love.

He says, the faithful love of the Lord never ends.

That that word love, the Hebrew word for it, is hesed, which is an all-encompassing word.

It's the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 13.

Patient, kind, good, faithful.

It's all the good characteristics into one word.

And he said, God is good, and he is faithful, and I remember his faithful love.

I remember that he is for me and not against me.

And so when I look around me, how in the world can you keep moving in the face of difficulty and darkness?

It's because I don't just see the darkness, but I see the light.

And his name is Jesus, and he is faithful in his love.

He also said that he is unending in his mercy.

His mercies never cease.

Mercy is undeserved forgiveness.

In other words, he's saying that God is so merciful that I don't deserve anything that he is doing.

Every heartbeat that we have, every time we are able to blink our eyes, every time we're able to move, every time we're able to breathe, is a mercy from the Lord.

And the Bible says that he does it again and again and again.

And he says, when I remember that my God never stops forgiving me, that God never stops walking with me.

That's what gives me the hope to move forward.

And so he is with me in love and in mercy and in continual faithfulness.

He says, Great is his faithfulness.

His mercies begin afresh each morning.

At some point, we've just got to start trusting that God's gonna show up again.

Like I don't know about you, but I'm one of these people that I am not very trusting when I get stood up at a coffee meeting.

You ever done that?

Like if you ever set a coffee meeting and you show up and then you're just by yourself, just enjoying your coffee all alone.

Is it just me?

Thank you.

Happens to me.

And I'll just be sitting there.

And so if they don't show up, I just act like I did it on purpose, you know?

And and then I will send that text message.

Hey, it looks like we missed each other, which is my real nice way of saying, You forgot.

And then they want to schedule another one.

And can I tell you, I gotta think about it.

I don't know.

But what happens if they miss the second one?

We ain't having coffee anymore.

Okay, I'll see you on Sunday.

You know what God could do for us?

How many times have we failed him and he showed up again?

And he kept loving us again, and he kept loving us again.

We run out of faithfulness, but he never does.

He continues to show up over and over and over again.

And Jeremiah is saying, when I think about his love, when I think about his mercy, and when I remember that he's never gonna change his mind about us, that gives me the courage to dare to hope.

The reality is that God never will never change his mind about us.

And when we realize that, that we begin to tell the stories of his goodness over and over to one another, it begins to encourage us to hope again.

Honestly, I don't, I didn't know this until recently, but that was one of the last messages that David gave to his people.

The Bible teaches us that the final lesson from David was to share the stories of God's goodness.

Psalm 145 is one of the last Psalms that David wrote before he before he died.

And he is writing about the goodness of God all throughout his life and the and the nation of Israel.

And this guy saw the highest of highs.

He stood alone on a battlefield in front of Goliath and killed that Joker.

I mean, that's a good day, all right?

And then his son came and overthrew his kingdom and he had to run for his life.

That's a really bad day.

And then when it was all over with, and he's thinking about the overall moments of his life, he says this he says, Everyone will share the story of your wonderful goodness.

They will sing with joy about your righteousness.

The Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

He said, The more I think about your goodness, and the more I think about the stories of your goodness, man, it fills me with joy and it helps me remember that you are merciful and compassionate.

All those times, God, you could have got angry, but you didn't.

All those times that you didn't have to love me, but you did.

And his last message to all of us was don't forget about the goodness of God because it gives us hope when nothing else will.

The good news is that God is good all the time.

And remembering God's goodness in the past gives us hope for today.

God is holy, God is powerful, God is sovereign, God is near, God is in control, and God is good all the time.

Let me say it.

God is good.

Okay, this is the last time we're gonna do it.

So I need you to say it real loud this time.

Okay, God is good all the time.

Yes, and all the time.

Just for this pastor's heart.

God is good and all the time.

You know how he's good?

Because we can see him clearly.

We see him in creation, we see him in his patience, we see him in the way that he moves in our lives and what he's done on the cross, and then we realize that he is strong, he dares us to hope.

And here's the last one, and that is that his goodness gives us direction.

His goodness doesn't just dare us to hope, but then he helps us move forward.

Wouldn't that be the saddest thing in the world to encourage somebody and then just good luck?

Hope it works out for you.

But instead, he says, Follow me.

Let's walk out of this together.

Look at what he says.

He says, I then I will say to myself, the Lord is my inheritance, therefore I will have hope in him.

The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.

So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.

He said, when I give God my problems, because of his goodness, I know he is strong.

And then when I think about his goodness, it gives me the hope and the courage to dare to dream again.

And then when I think about his goodness, he helps me know my next steps.

And here they are.

The next steps are number one, is my response is to commit myself to him, not to draw away from him, but to commit myself to him.

He says, the Lord is my inheritance, the Lord is what I am looking for, the Lord is what is my sustainer, the Lord is my future hope.

Therefore, I will hope in him.

When we remember the goodness of God, it reminds us that Christianity is not about going in with God 90%, it's not 95%, it's not 99.5%.

We go all in on God because he's worth it, because he's able, he can stand the weight of all of our problems, and so we commit to him because he is good.

Also, we move forward.

He gives us the courage to move with him.

He says the Lord is good to those who depend on him and who search for him.

That word search isn't what happens when I ask my family if they know where the TV remote is.

Is that just me?

I will ask my family.

If you want to see the TV remote, you know what they do?

Literally, this is what they do.

I don't see it.

Well, of course you don't see it.

I have to make an announcement.

Everyone, stand up.

It is now a search party of four.

Okay, we shall find the remote.

That that is the word.

That is it.

Usually, usually it's closer than we think.

We just don't see it from the angle that we're at, right?

Well, that's the reality of God.

Is that the word?

It's like, God, I'm not just going to hope, but I'm gonna activate myself.

I'm gonna begin to look for you in every one of my pain, every piece of my pain, every every moment of my darkness.

I'm gonna go look for you because God is closer than we realize.

We just don't see how close that He is.

And so I'm gonna commit myself, I'm gonna move forward, and then I'm gonna trust His timing.

It says it is good to wait quietly for salvation, for deliverance from the Lord.

Just say, God, I don't understand.

He's strong enough.

God, I don't know how he's strong enough.

But I trust your character that while I don't understand, I trust you.

And the reality of it is, is our response is to walk with him wherever he leads because we can trust him.

You know why?

Because we see him clearly.

And when we look at creation, we see an expression of his goodness.

When we see his patience with all of us, we see an expression of his goodness.

And then when we see the cross and the beauty of the cross, we see his character and how good he is.

And so when I don't understand why he went left instead of right, when I don't understand why this happened instead of that happened, I go, God, if you were faithful through the cross, faithful through your patience with me, faithful through everything else I see, then at some point I gotta trust you with everything I don't understand.

You've been faithful this far, you're gonna be faithful again.

That's one of the reasons why I love that we're reading through the book of Psalms together.

If you if you're new here, we we read through God's Word one chapter at a time, and you can join us by texting RLC Bible to 94,000, and we have finally began the book of Psalms.

Can I tell you, all the way back three years ago, we first started, we just finished the book of Leviticus.

That was the first book, and people started asking me, When are we gonna do the book of Psalms?

It's like you have no idea how far we've got to go before we get there.

We we are just getting started.

Well, today's the day, all right?

This past week, we just got started.

And it is it's one of my favorite books because the book of Psalms teaches us how to relate to God.

It's it's a collection of psalm books where they are writing, the people of God are writing about their relationship with God and how they relate to God.

And if there's one thing that I see when we read the book of Psalms, is we see God's goodness over and over again.

Because here's here's how every psalm is gonna start.

I'm gonna go ahead and tell you 95% of all the psalms are gonna start like this.

God, everything's bad.

And then it's God, can you kill all my enemies by noon today, if you don't mind?

Then it's can you do it quicker than noon today?

And then it's, but oh God, you are faithful and you are good, and I worship you anyway.

All right.

That is always what it is.

God, all of this is bad, but you are good.

And that's how they end the song.

That's what happened in one of them.

We read just yesterday.

Just yesterday, uh, David was writing and he says, Go away, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping, the Lord has heard my plea, and the Lord will answer my prayer.

And so with David, why?

Because he is good, because he is good, because he is bigger than all of my enemies, because when I think about his goodness and I begin to remember how big he is, my problems start to get smaller and smaller and smaller because he is so very worthy.

Can I tell you, no matter what you're going through today, God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good, and here's the promise that God has for us, and that is this that the Lord is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes.

I love this, He is close to those who trust in Him.

You know, you've probably had some of these times as well when you have a lot of friends when everything's going well.

You know, they say that I think it's something like 90 something percent of people who win the lottery are broke within five years.

And some of it's because they spent a whole bunch of money, but they say also that friends and family come out of the woodwork and they're like, Oh, hey, good buddy friend, can I have a million?

To the point that people get sued over it.

Everybody's the friend of somebody who wins the lottery, right?

Nobody's the friend of somebody who who has to file bankruptcy, who loses their home, who loses everything they have.

That's when we find out who our true friends are.

I don't know about you, but I've had those moments when everything was going great, everybody's high-fiving you, and then everything starts to go wrong.

Feel like everybody's forgot your phone number?

You've been there too.

You know what's amazing about Jesus is that he's the saint, he will celebrate you on the mountain, and he will cry with you in the valley.

He never leaves.

He is close to those who trust him, not to those who have it all figured out, not to those who never have a problem, not to those who who are constantly on that mountain.

But all he wants for you is to say, God, I trust you.

I trust you because when I see your beauty in creation, when I see your beauty and your patience with me over and over again, when I yelled at you, when I told you I didn't want you anymore, and if I told when I told you that if you were good, why did they have to leave?

If if you are good, why did that have to happen?

You know, God never took his hand away.

Even even when we slapped him in the face, he said, I still love you, I still want you, I'm still not mad at you, I'm still strong enough.

It's in those dark moments.

The Bible said God demonstrated his great love for us in that while we were still sinners, Jesus said, I'll die, I'll die for them, I'll go for them.

When we ran from him, he ran toward us.

And if he is that good, what else will he do?

It is against his nature to leave us alone, it is against his nature to not care and to not be brokenhearted with us who are brokenhearted.

His nature is goodness, therefore, he walks with us, and when we see him more clearly, we see everything else.

And for some of us, we need to be reminded that that's awesome, that God is good.

Just like the story at the at the beginning.

That's what we need to remember.

And that is, if you remember, I was not feeling it.

But my family was.

And they dragged me, snot at all, to the movie theater.

It's like if you could just see it, you'll be excited.

They weren't getting a cut of it.

They were not salesmen, they were satisfied customers.

And then when they took me and I had a chance to watch it, I agreed.

That's awesome.

Do you know?

In just a moment, we're gonna receive communion because that's what I want to do for some of us today.

For some of us.

I feel like if we could just drag ourselves back to the foot of the cross.

If we could just drag you, snot and all grief and all, pain and all, difficulty and all, whatever you have, bring it with you.

You don't have to leave all that behind.

He says, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

You don't have to fix yourself and then come to Jesus.

He wants all your broken pieces.

He never intended for you to figure it out by yourself.

You're supposed to walk with him, he's the one who heals you.

And I feel like that if we could just drag one another back to the cross, we could see him more clearly.

To say, when I think about creation, when I think about his patience, when I think about the cross, it reminds me of his goodness.

And if God would come to this earth, die on my cross, rise again from the dead, and be willing to wash away my sins, not just once, but once that paid for it all.

Sins you hadn't even committed yet.

He's already washed them away because of his goodness.

If he'll do that, then I can trust him with my questions.

I can trust him with my pain.

I can trust him with my family.

I can trust him.

And so today, as we get ready to end our service, in just a moment, I want us to receive communion together.

And then we're gonna worship God together because my hope is that kind of spiritually, I want us to drag each other back to the cross.

Because if we could just get a clear picture again of how good he is, then even snot and all, we can say, God is good, and he is awesome.

And if he's strong enough to do that, he's strong enough to do anything else.

In just a moment, I want to pray for us, and the band's gonna come up, and I'm gonna give you some instruction on how to receive communion if you want to.

And as a church, I just want us to remember that God is good by receiving communion.

And if you're in here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, can I tell you today's the day?

Jesus died on the cross for your salvation.

He died on the cross because we can't fix ourselves, we can't wash away our own sin.

The Bible says that the penalty of our sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.

And if that's you today, on the back of your connect card is the plan of salvation.

And when the communion buckets go by in just a moment, if you're not a Christian yet today, I want you to grab one of these communion elements and I want you to take this card.

And as we receive communion as a church, I want you to hold on to it.

And I want you to pray, and I want you to repair your heart.

And then once we've received communion, I want you to find us back at the prayer table and say that I want to know Jesus because we want to receive communion with you for the very first time.

It'll be our honor to watch you be born into the kingdom and receive communion.

But for all of us, let's prepare our hearts to focus on the goodness of God with communion.

Can we pray right now together?

Father, thank you so much for today.

Thank you, God, for your goodness and for your mercy.

I'm so thankful, God, that you are with us and that you are for us today.

I'm so thankful, God, that as many people that are in this room right now, it is the many different miracles that you are able to perform.

God, that there are so many things that happen in our lives, so many things that we don't understand.

And sometimes we are left with more questions than answers.

Sometimes, God, we don't understand why this happened instead of that.

But we know, God, that you are good.

We see you in your creation, we see you in your amazing patience, we see you when we see the cross.

And Lord, so many times the enemy wants to wants to make our view of the cross blurry, distant, far away.

But God, when we see you and what you did for us, and realize that the same love that kept you on the cross is the same love you have for us now.

It causes us to dare to hope again.

Because the mercies of the Lord are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness, your love is unending.

I pray that as we receive communion together today, you'll help us get a clear picture of who you are, and we'll see that you are for us and not against us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

And amen.

Would you stand with me all over the house this morning?

We're gonna prepare ourselves to receive communion together.

If you are on the right hand side of your row, you are the designated communion line leader underneath your seat at the end is the communion elements.

If you would like to receive communion with us today, you're welcome to grab a communion element and pass it along.

If you are not a Christian yet, today's the day.

And it's gonna be an honor to receive communion with you back at the prayer table.

So grab those communion elements, and we're gonna walk you through the prayer of salvation in just a few moments.

But for those of us who call ourselves Christ followers, it's a moment of worship for us.

And so, can we just prepare our hearts and our minds and sing this together?

And just prepare ourselves to receive communion.

Come on, let's sing this together to the Lord.